Is it older than Israel?

The Palmach, the strike companies, was formed on 15 May 1941 as the Haganah's standing force, trained at first with British help against a German invasion that never came. It was the best-trained Jewish force in Palestine when the war of 1948 began, and it carried out the raids on al-Khisas, Balad al-Shaykh and Sa'sa', took Ein al-Zeitun, Safad and Tiberias, and fought at Lydda.

Its commanders, Yigal Allon, Yitzhak Rabin and Moshe Dayan among them, led the Israeli army and the state for the next forty years.